Academia Fighting Whiteness

During his testimony Wednesday, Thandiwe suggested that his reason for even purchasing the gun he used in the shootings was to enforce beliefs he’d developed about white people during his later years as an anthropology major at the University of West Georgia.

A professor at Philadelphia’s Drexel University has a heartwarming Christmas message: Associate Professor of Politics and Global Studies George Ciccariello-Maher is wishing for a “white genocide.”

Taking to his Twitter account on Christmas eve, Ciccariello-Maher, himself a white man, tweeted, “All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide.” -Warner Todd Huston

“Whiteness is most certainly and inevitably terror.” -Zandria Robinson, University of Memphis professor

According to Portland State University Professor’s Rachel Sanders’ “White Privilege” course, “whiteness” must be dismantled if racial justice will ever be achieved.

The course description states that “whiteness is the lynchpin of structures of racial meaning and racial inequality in the United States” and claims that “to preserve whiteness is to preserve racial injustice.”

Students taking the course will “endeavor to make whiteness strange.” In order to make whiteness strange, the description says students must “interrogate whiteness as an unstable legal, political, social, and cultural construction”

The Graduate English Center at the City University of New York is set to host an event on March 22, titled, “Refusing Institutional Whiteness: Possibilities, Alternatives, and Beyond.”

The event’s description states that “whiteness continues to be a crucial problem in our English department.” The Graduate English Center brought “together a group of scholars and thinkers in a range of disciplines in order to help us imagine, discuss, and produce new ways of resisting whiteness and envisioning alternatives in institution settings.”

“Refusal,” “dissent,” and “protest” are listed as possible ways to combat whiteness in academia.

A staff union at the University of Georgia is now defending the embattled teaching assistant (TA) who said "some white people may have to die."

The University of Georgia (UGA) chapter of the United Campus Workers of Georgia (UCWGA) drafted a letter and petition to defend UGA TA Irami Osei-Frimpong, who said in January that “some white people may have to die for black communities to be made whole in this struggle to advance to freedom.”

"Fighting White people is a skill," the TA tweeted in January. "Really, it's one reason I'm in support of integrated schools. You have to get used to fighting White people."

Osei-Frimpong proceeded to quote clinical psychologist Bobby Wright, who said "Blacks kill Blacks because they have never been trained to kill Whites."

The University of Iowa is holding workshops entitled “Understanding Your Whiteness to Become Better Allies,” on Nov. 30 and again in February.

The school’s Chief Diversity Office, along with “several campus allies,” are sponsoring the event. These workshops are aimed at “people who want to learn about and discuss the inherent privileges that come with being White.”

“This can be the first step for self-reflection and assuming greater personal responsibility for eliminating racism,” the description continues.

A newly published academic journal article argues that science educators must do more to combat “whiteness” and “White ideology” in the classroom.

In their research essay titled “Towards a truer multicultural science education: how whiteness impacts science education,” University of Colorado at Denver scholars Cheryl E. Matias and Paul T. Le seek to “have the field consider the theoretical frames of whiteness and how it might influence how we engage in science education such that our hope for diversity never fully materializes.”...

“For many scientists, we are convinced that objectivity prevents an oppressive culture because discoveries are independent of identity,” they observe. “Consequently, we unknowingly spread whiteness ideology.”

A University of Colorado, Denver administrator worries that white children may “forfeit their humanity” if they aren’t raised by sufficiently progressive parents.

In an academic article, Naomi Nishi, who facilitates educational programs for professors and periodically teaches classes, argues that parents should employ “critical race parenting” to prevent white children from committing “racial microaggressions” against their peers.

"Can we...begin at the core with our white children and work to ward off white identity and whiteness before children succumb and forfeit their humanity in order to join the oppressor?"...

White children, on the other hand, are especially prone to committing racial microaggressions because they “learn a complicated dance of whiteness” that teaches them not only to “maintain and defend whiteness,” but to do so while claiming to be “colorblind.”

Weinstein originally caused a ruckus on his very-liberal Washington state university when he sensibly opposed an event that required all whites to depart from the campus for a day. He called the idea a “show of force and an act of oppression.”

For voicing this opinion and being white himself, Weinstein was branded a racist and hounded by campus agitators who demanded his termination. On Thursday, the biology professor had to conduct his class off-campus due to police telling him it wasn’t safe for the mild academic to appear at his place of work.

Students at a public university in New York will have the chance to take a class called the “Abolition of Whiteness” in the fall, all while knocking out a political science requirement.

Jennifer Gaboury, a women and gender studies professor, teaches “Abolition of Whiteness” at Hunter College... The class’s listing on the school’s course catalog provides only a vague description of its content, but a flyer displaying a fall 2016 offering of the course claims it examines “how whiteness – and/or white supremacy and violence – is intertwined with conceptions of gender, race, sexuality, class, body ability, nationality, and age.”

Student protesters at the University of California-Berkeley gathered in front of a bridge on campus and forcibly prevented white people from crossing it. Students of color were allowed to pass. The massive human wall was conceived as a pro-safe space demonstration. Activists wanted the university administration to designate additional safe spaces for trans students, gay students, and students of color.

Resign, White Cis Men...

Not to alarm you, but I probably want you to quit your job, or at least take a demotion. Statistically speaking, you are probably taking up room that should go to someone else.

If you are a white cis man (meaning you identify as male and you were assigned male at birth) you almost certainly should resign from your position of power. That’s right, please quit.

Too difficult? Well, as a first step, at least get off your hiring committee, your curriculum committee, and make sure you’re replaced by a woman of color or trans person.

A white Ivy League professor has taken to the pages of the Huffington Post to condemn her own race, declaring that she chose never to reproduce because her children would simply inherit white privilege... “I sometimes don’t want to be white either,” Michael says. “There was a time in my 20s when everything I learned about the history of racism made me hate myself, my Whiteness, my ancestors… and my descendants. I remember deciding that I couldn’t have biological children because I didn’t want to propagate my privilege biologically.”

Queer, Able-Bodied, Cisgender Woman Fights Whiteness...

As a white assistant professor of mostly white graduate students who will become higher education leaders, I work to dismantle whiteness in my curriculum, assignments and pedagogy.

I make meaning of my own white identity through my commitment to reflexivity as a constant activity.

Equally salient are my identities as a queer, able-bodied, cisgender woman, who grew up working class in the rural Midwestern United States. This manuscript explores the ways my identities, experiences and teaching paradigm anchor my commitment to the work of deconstructing whiteness.

Students at Pomona College have published a demand letter urging administrators to rescind their offer to hire Sociology Professor Alice Goffman because she’s white. The “Letter to the Pomona College Sociology Department,” published last Friday argues that by hiring Goffman, the administration has neglected their commitment to promoting diversity and supporting women of color.

“This practice is detrimental to Pomona’s goal of supporting students of color.” The collective of “Sociology students, alumni, and allies” open their letter by expressing their “anger” and “concern” regarding Goffman’s hire, calling it a “failure” to address the lack of professors of color on campus.

In his “Introduction to Multicultural Literature,” for example, professor John Streamas informs students in his syllabus that he expects white students who want “to do well in this class” to “reflect” their “grasp of history and social relations” by “deferring to the experiences of people of color.” ... Streamas, who obtained his Ph.D. at Bowling Green State University, is most notable because he told a student who supports limits on illegal immigration: “You are just a white shitbag.”

The University of Wisconsin is offering a course this spring on the “Problem of Whiteness,” which is taught by a radical assistant professor who believes America is a terrorist state. The course will cover institutional racism and “what it means to be #woke.”...

“Have you ever wondered what it really means to be white?” the course description states. “If you’re like most people, the answer is probably ‘no.’ But here is your chance!”... The course is part of “Critical Whiteness Studies,” and will attempt to offer solutions to the “problem of whiteness.”

In a scholarly article published in Teaching Education, Professor Cheryl Matias calls whiteness “a disease,” while suggesting new ways to teach urban students about “racism and whiteness.” Dr. Matias is an assistant Professor at the University of Colorado at Denver. Her article, Why do you make me hate myself?: Re-Teaching Whiteness, Abuse, and Love in Urban Teacher Education, was published in Teaching Education this year...

Racism and whiteness are diseases that need to be addressed, she continues, writing, “We cannot even begin to address symptoms, such as the racial achievement gap, if we do not address the underlying diseases of racism and Whiteness.”

The State University of New York (SUNY) at Binghamton is now offering a course called “#StopWhitePeople2K16” as part of routine training for residential assistants. The university’s residential assistant training schedule lists “#StopWhitePeople2016” on its roster, with the mission of giving RA’s an “overview of disabilities in Higher Education.”... The three RAs claim they will give “#StopWhitePeople2K16” course attendees the “tools” to respond to “uneducated people” with “‘good’ arguments.”

St. John’s College in Santa Fe recently launched a new “study group” for “those who most often exhibit racist and sexist behavior—white males.” According to correspondences obtained by Campus Reform, the study group was advertised in a campus-wide email forwarded to all students and faculty, explicitly encouraging white people to attend four sessions on privilege so they can “begin to be self-critical.”...

Participants will apparently deal with two main problems, those being “the depravity of whiteness and the brutality of masculinity.”

Arizona State University (ASU) is offering a course on “the problem of whiteness,” which is being taught by a white professor. The course, ENG 401: “Studies in American Literature/Culture: U.S. Race Theory & the Problem of Whiteness,” is being offered this spring at ASU’s Tempe campus. The course is being taught by Lee Bebout, an assistant professor of English at ASU.

University of Pittsburgh professor Shanara Reid-Brinkley held a lecture Tuesday where she stated that American democracy was built on “anti-blackness” and that black citizens cannot possibly be free in America. “I think that we’re all screwed because white people are in charge,” Reid-Brinkley said, speaking at an event at the University of Wisconsin.

She also blamed “global warming, genocide and colonization” on white people.

A University of Hawaii professor recently claimed that universities should “stop hiring white cis men” until “the problem goes away.”

In a recent American Mathematical Society blog post—unsubtly titled “Get Out The Way”—University of Hawaii at Manoa "temporary assistant professor" of mathematics Piper Harron argues that white, cisgender males should immediately resign from their positions because “actual solutions require women of color and trans people.”

A member of the Faith Council speaking at a Democratic National Convention event Wednesday said that he is tired of Muslims having to apologize for terrorism. Instead, he thinks white Christian males should be the ones saying sorry. -Alex Pfeiffer

The University of California-Los Angeles is offering to pay students to serve as “Social Justice Advocates” who will “educate” their peers about “systems [of] oppression.”

The Social Justice Advocates program seeks students who want to help their classmates “navigate a world that operates on whiteness, patriarchy, and heteronormativity as the primary ideologies,” and comes with a quarterly stipend, the amount of which has yet to be determined.

During his testimony Wednesday, Thandiwe suggested that his reason for even purchasing the gun he used in the shootings was to enforce beliefs he’d developed about white people during his later years as an anthropology major at the University of West Georgia.

“I was trying to prove a point that Europeans had colonized the world, and as a result of that, we see a lot of evil today,” he said. “In terms of slavery, it was something that needed to be answered for. I was trying to spread the message of making white people mend.”